Greg Johnson: Concentrate on how to fix families

Kate, Rick and I fell into one of those spontaneous after-church conversations that make my parish such a pleasant place, an essential place where our community comes to grow into family. Kate commented on my recent column on early childhood education.

“Thank you for writing about preschool education,” Kate said. “I taught preschool and taught preschool teachers for years.” Since my column pointed to studies that show most gains made in pre-K and Head Start disappear by third grade, I thought, “Uh-oh.” Kate went on: “You told the truth. I’ve seen the good preschool education can do, but I’ve also seen the limitations.” She said my observations were accurate — government-sponsored preschool alone won’t solve the achievement gap.

“My theory,” I said, “is the gains disappear because at-risk children return to at-risk homes.” In those homes, education either is not valued or the parents are so harried that survival crowds out all else. Given the data, I said, we should figure out why preschool gains disappear, but my guess was family failure.

Rick, a friend with a gift for insightful and incisive questions, chimed in: “So should we just shut down those programs and tell those kids from disadvantaged homes, ‘Too bad. You’re stuck?’ ”

A few years ago, my answer would have been, “Yes.” No more. While the problem lies with families and government cannot and should not solve every failure of every institution, the achievement gap inevitably turns into an income gap at adulthood, and those implications simply cannot be ignored.

Soon after our Sunday conversation, a reader, Jan, forwarded a New York Times column. David Brooks bolstered my thesis but displayed the incredible naivete upon which so many “eduwonks” base positions and policy.

“Today millions of American children grow up in homes where they don’t learn the skills they need to succeed in life,” Brooks wrote. “Their vocabularies are tiny. They can’t regulate their emotions. When they get to kindergarten they’ve never been read a book, so they don’t know the difference between the front cover and the back cover.”

Brooks firmly favors preschool expansion. In conclusion, Brooks candidly restates the problem: “This is rude to say, but here’s what this is about: Millions of parents don’t have the means, the skill or, in some cases, the interest in building their children’s future.”

But, in the end, Brooks falls for the failed fantasy of the ivory-towered, private-schooled elite. “Early childhood education is about building structures so both parents and children learn practical life skills,” Brooks wrote. “It’s about getting kids from disorganized homes into rooms with kids from organized homes so good habits will rub off.”

This very, very, very rarely happens. Instead, kids from disorganized and uninterested homes are more likely to disrupt and delay instruction, hindering the educational experience and achievement of the entire room.

Yes, the achievement gap must be addressed. But, again, why do gains disappear? I fault families. And if you know how to fix families, a nation needs to know.